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EVENT

Reverted
The city of Recollé...have you looked beyond the city lately? It may be time to do so.

I.

The good news, perhaps, is that everyone is back in their original bodies. The last few weeks may have been trying and embarrassing for several of you, but never fear! You're all in this together.

The nice thing about returning to your original body is that everything else seems to disappear along with the unintentional swapping. Your dreams on the evening of the 16th and the 17th are unoccupied and you're blissfully alone. Hallucinations fade away and the city almost feels brighter and cleaner. The messy paint job from May and June slowly flakes off to reveal a sparkling almost-new landscape below. All buildings, landmarks, flora and fauna are back to their original colors. The sky, however, is still painted a strange wash of colors and symbols.

The other nice thing about returning to your original body is that it's much easier to feel the sudden, sharp pain on your palm at midnight on the 18th, a needling high-pressure pain that lasts for all of 30 seconds. Upon looking at your hand, however, you'll notice something new.

In bright red font there's a new marking that reads: 13 Days:23:59:59.

58. 57. 56...

The timer steadily counts down, each second synced with each beat of your heart. As the days pass by the timer will slowly shift from the red to a dark, ominous purple. The glow of the mark becomes harder to ignore, and there doesn't seem to be a way to remove it. Good luck with that.

II.

The Retrospec app doesn't seem to be much better. The scrambled messages and posting errors seem to have stopped and users are no longer receiving messages and pictures about themselves.

In fact, the app seems to be quiet for a while.

As users continue to use the app they will find that any post, comment or message that they send via the app will be tagged with a different ID. Instead of their name, all messages will be from Alpha##### or Beta#####. The string of numbers will be unique for each user and cannot be changed at any time. Individual mailboxes will be attached to your name, but the Alpha/Beta ID has made its way there, too.

Over the course of the rest of the month, Alphas (those who have had the app for at least a year from August 2017) will find that messages to other Alphas are sent more easily than to Betas (those who have had the app for less than a year from August 2017) and vice versa. Messages to anyone from the opposite "faction" may drop out half-way or appear blank entirely. It might be wise to find a better mode of communication in the meantime.

III.
Even if you're alone in your dreams, you're not alone in the waking world. No one is free from the timer on their palm, though they may come to find that it impacts some users more than others.

Some users will experience a steady pulsating in their hand as the timer counts backwards, each second ticking by. Standing still just long enough will send the pulse out of their hands and through the rest of their body, over their arms and through their feet straight into the ground.

The earth begins to shake under these unlucky users, little quakes and trembles that spread out and seek out anyone else nearby. Whether you know this person or not, whether you're alone or several of you are impacted by this earthquake, the ground beneath you splits open and you're pulled straight down into the crevice, falling aimlessly. Instead of finding your own life flashing before your eyes, you'll find yourself witnessing events, faces, and memories that are important to the user the pulses came from.

On the outside of things, the user will promptly collapse into a coma-like state no matter where they're at. Inside their mind, however, a scene begins to set itself to welcome you as you land. It isn't a memory and it isn't a hallucination. It's a construct of someone else's innerworkings that have trapped you and blocked you in.

As the haze around you dissipates, the puzzle you received earlier this month floats in front of you. Whether you have finished building it or not it is now fully completed and all of the words have faded except for "Gordian Knot."

Your cell phones will not work in these dreamscapes, and even Retrospec seems to be disconnected. It's up to you to venture further into someone else's mind and help them untangle whatever mystery is hidden within themselves.

IV.
So about that timer. As time begins to run out, more and more people begin to experience dream dives and encounter the knots of others that they must fix. Even inside the dreamscape, the timer glows just as brightly as it had out in the real world and it continues counting down.

At least it gives you a sense of time and just how many minutes, hours, or days you've been stuck inside someone's subconscious. You might even realize that the timer is directly tied to just how much time you have to unravel the knots of your friends, loved ones, and strangers.

Easy, right? Take caution, citizens. The monsters and demons lurking in the corners of someone else's psyche can manifest to something quite powerful. You will not wake up and be booted out of someone's dream if you are attacked, but your physical body and mind will shut down and remain unconscious for one week.

Be careful how you approach these knots, however! Should you change any part of them too much, the host will find themselves rejecting this new information. Too great of a change will result in the loss of an important memory to them and no way to recover it inside the dive.

Even with these possible losses divers are responsible for fixing what's gone wrong and relieving the knot wound tightly in the host's mind. Venture forward, explore, and break it apart to awaken then. You will be greatly rewarded for your effort.

Failure to break the knot and save the host from this comatose state will result in all parties suffering a loss. At first it may not be obvious, but over time it will be clear an important memory or item has left your possession.

Is it just limited to dives though? Some users will feel that even with successful diving they don't quite feel like themselves. It seems as though there's some further self-evaluation they must meet in order to fully recover who they are...or were, as it may be.

Tick-tock, Retrospecters. Mind the time.

BONUS.
Ever since he moved in back in February, the lights have always been on in Zee's office and home at the top of the Towers. Office hours are whenever he feels like making them and he's usually reachable by phone, email, or app.

However, beginning on the 18th, messages to his inbox begin to go unanswered. Checking the inbox itself will reveal a change as well.

Delta#02018329 is no longer receiving messages.

On the 19th, the lights go off permanently. Beginning on the 20th, anyone who ventures to his office will find the building empty and locked, no sign of Zee at all. Reaching out to him receives a bounce-back error message.

Any previous correspondences with him will remain, though his name has been replaced with his Delta ID.

It's hard to say what's happened, but after some time, all users will finally receive a message from Delta#68422.

Stop him.

No other messages will be sent or received from this account.

Welcome to

recolle's August event, part 2!

As notated in the plotting post, the dreamdives are now live! Players are in charge of creating their own unique dive experiences for characters to explore and play through. These can be as harmless or as dangerous as you'd like. However, please be sure to let us know here if your character will be failing a dive and what memory/item they will be losing!

For Prompt II, characters IDs will be comprised of the following: The date your character first appeared on Retrospec (so in Zee's case, that was 02/01/18) and the last four digits of your character's IC inbox as found in the HTML (in Zee's case, 8329.) These IDs will be more relevant in September, but for ease of playing/making sure no one ICly overlaps please use these numbers!

Friendly reminder that if your character will be keeping their new AUs, please reply to this comment on the OOC plot post! As per Prompt IV, characters who are failing to recover their original AUs will begin to notice something is off and will not be able to accomplish what is needed to regain their original AUs. What this is is up to you!

As per the plotting post, threading out successful dream dives will earn you a free memory! Qualifying threads must be at least five comments from you and can be from you either hosting a dive or participating in one. Please note that failed dives will not be eligible for freebies.

Any questions you have regarding this event may be directed to the mod comment here. Be sure to review the mods' question thread on the plotting post for important information as well!

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[ Clover takes a step back at the video of a conversation that has not happened. She does not want to know of a life she didn't live. She does not want to be aware of it. If she and Anna were better friends in a world that she still was adopted, that she still found love, she could accept it, but the only other life she's found out about is one where her found family is broken and fractured.

She closes her eyes. ]

I don't want to repeat that.

[ Is it repeating if she doesn't remember it? ]

[as if... acquiescing, the Knot turns off the video. that terminal fades and all that is left is the data. A2 is attributing many of these actions to the will of the Knot, unaware of or unwilling to accept that there could be parts of her own code written into her that she does not know about.]

It's how it's been written. We can't change the code.

[she can't change the code. she will not be allowed. A2 turns around slowly, revealing the battle damage of blown-off artificial skin exposing nothing but black chassis and a useless scrap of cloth. her hand grips the sword more tightly, as though she's in any danger of losing her grip on it.]

This is how this happens. Every time. It's what the code does.

[ No one and nothing should ever listen to Clover. She's grateful for this, however, and it means her focus doesn't have to be split. ]

I know nothing about code, but the past doesn't have to dictate us. Who we are now can be different than who we were then.

[ That's what she hopes. That's what she wishes. If she parrots the words of her friends and people who support her, she can believe them more eventually, can't she? ]

We can rewrite your code. You don't need your sword.

[in response, A2 lifts her hand. her fingers open as far as they can, but it amounts to nothing more than a couple joints shifting in vain. her fingertips transition seamlessly from artificial skin to the black metal of her hilt, and the absurd mess of metal that passes for a pommel has fused itself with A2's wrist and forearm in that same flesh-to-black gradient.]

You can't do anything. This is what I am.

[she's heard those words from others, in memories. never directly spoken to her. it seems strange that cloverGeteilt() would be the one to say them here. A2 steadies her gaze and points her sword at this naïve woman who thinks that things can change with a few kind words. it's a distinct gesture, her feet planted firmly and her eyes glaring forward and the sword stretching straight out in front of her.]

Take one step closer and I'll show you.

[ Is it naive? Clover knows it can't be so simple, but whatever this is has to be separate from reality somehow. She doesn't want to fight, and it looks like that's what A2 wants to do. ]

You can't even use the sword as an extension of your hand as a metaphor when you made it literal. If I can't do anything, I shouldn't be here. If you want me closer, you'll have to come to me.

[ Kind is not a word that should be applied to Clover. Clover cares and can care very deeply, but her altruism can't be called that when it's on the edge of selfishness. ]

[she continues glaring, taking in those words, coming to the conclusion that she's being mocked. it's an easy trap to fall into, but A2 is simple for being so complex, according to the code from private abstract main(). she begins walking forward slowly, lowering the sword as she does, disobeying her own if-then statement and ignoring that there must be something in her code telling her to hold back for now.]

[the distorted sound of her feet against the platform echoes out and stops when she is within easy, clear range of cloverGeteilt(). it would be effortless to run her through. it would take less than a second.]

Then what are you going to do?

[ I don't know is the answer that pops in her mind, but she's not going to tell A2 that. What use would that do? ]

I want to know all my options. What is your purpose here? What is the point of you and that sword? What is the point of that?

[ She points to the Knot behind A2, but she doesn't look away from the android. She doesn't trust that she won't be attacked in the next second. Clover will defend herself, but she won't make the first hit. ]

And she thought you were smart.

[A2 doesn't plan on rising to any more bait in lieu of putting out some of her own for Clover to bite at, if it's alluring enough, but it's a secondary goal here. she wants a reason for the programming to kick in. for Clover to get too close to discovering things, for her to take one step too far. for her to rush at her so it becomes a self-defense subroutine.]

Does everything need a reason behind it? Does everything need a purpose to make sense? [under normal circumstances, this isn't remotely what A2 would do. but she has the data of every conversation main() has ever had with Clover, even ones she may not remember. they aren't playing; the screen is still off. but she thinks she knows how to push Clover's needle into the red.]

What's yours?

[ Clover's temper flares. Her fingers curl into fists. She wants to close her eyes to help contain her anger, but that'd be a stupid move when A2 aims for a fight. ]

If you talk of her like a separate person, you aren't her. I don't owe you an answer when you won't provide one first.

[ Her tone is clipped.

Of course Clover needs a reason. Of course Clover needs a purpose. She needs and craves acknowledgment, love, admiration, anything to make her feel more than how she views herself. If there isn't a reason, why else would it happen? Why else should it happen?

If terrible things happened for no reason at all, what is that supposed to make her feel? If terrible things happened for no reason, the world is that much unfair. The world has less reason to exist.

That—

Is dangerous thinking, and Clover grits her teeth. How apocalyptic. It'd be funny if it weren't so terrible. If she weren't so terrible. If she weren't trying to not be terrible. ]

Either give me a reason for what you want me to do or for what you want to do, or this is a waste of time.

[A2 notices. she notices how she's getting to Clover, how these words are likely playing on things she hates about herself. main() would be disgusted by what A2 is doing, but main() isn't here.]

If it's such a waste of time, why did you come here in the first place? Don't you want to save her? [from what? wherever Anna is, she must not be in any danger if A2 is out here just guarding the Knot, but.] Don't you want to bring her back? To be the hero? To have her appreciate you?

[these are more lies. more horrible lies that Anna would push back against with all of her might. but A2 is on the verge of begging for a fight and she just needs one spark, one thing to push Clover into wanting to kick her ass so she start killing things and severing limbs as she's been programmed to.]

[ A hero? That's laughable. Even as she remembers a conversation with someone else about being a hero, she never once thought she was a hero. She never once thought she could be a hero. Oh, how nice it would be to be capable—to care that much, but she doesn't. She cares deeply but only about very, very few. ]

It wasn't a choice. Being here isn't a choice. I would help Anna or Annalise, but to say that being here is a choice is a joke. Neither of them would say anything like that.

[ "If you want to use your sword so much, use it on yourself," is on the tip of her tongue, but she's not the Clover that knows Anna. She's the Clover that has talked to Annalise.

Her viciousness is on mild. ]

I'd rather be appreciated for things unrelated to violence.

[ Like a normal and good person? That she wants to be. ]

[for now.]

So would she. But things don't always go the way we want them to go. You didn't want to be here.

[is any of this right? Clover is testing her fucking patience, but she hasn't done anything to trip A2's programming yet. she hasn't done anything to force A2's hand—a hand just as deadly as Clover's own, if she had to guess. she tilts her head up at Clover and shifts her weight on her legs.]

You'll have to fight your way out of this one, Jaeger. It's the only way you're getting through me.

[ Attack her first, A2. This is a war of ATTRITION. Who has the least patience? Who wouldn't succumb to violence first? On one hand, Clover more readily shows her aggression now, but she is more well-adjusted. ]

If you're guarding whatever that is, all I need to do is get to it, right?

[ Without any other indication, Clover sprints towards the Knot with all the speed of an Intoner.

Running comes easily to her. ]

[that's. faster than she expected, but it's certainly enough to trip every last if-then statement in her code and ready her blade, electricity buzzing along the edge. she's no faster than average, but there isn't much room to maneuver up here, either. especially not if she's making a beeline for the Knot; it leaves A2 with enough of a chance to catch up with her and—predictably—try to stab her in the back.]

[she only has limited data on Clover. she doesn't know if this will do anything to her. she doesn't even know if she'll hit with how quickly Clover is running, but this is her realm and everything runs on data here and A2 is nothing but data. she should have the advantage. she needs the advantage when she's dealing with people who, for some reason, care about main() like this.]

Edited 2018-08-27 05:54 (UTC)

[ Clover personally doesn't have much experience fighting. She has the knowledge. She has the memories, and she has the skills back, but how much would that do for her in real time like this?

There's only one way to find out.

As much as it would be poetic justice and a thing of narrative beauty for Clover to be successfully stabbed in the back (may there be another chance for it to happen after August PLEASE), Clover ducks in a smooth movement and swings a leg out to try to sweep A2's from under her. She's not surprised A2 caught up because this is her domain. ]

[ha. of course her legs are as dangerous as her fists. the Knot whirs almost sarcastically in Clover's direction as more data gets written to her file, and A2 stumbles. she tries to catch her fall with her sword, but she has the angle wrong; she can't jab the tip into the platform like she wants.]

[she catches her fall with the open palm of her left hand, but it does have her out of commission for a brief moment as she tries pushing herself back up. there's more to Clover than what she's shown main(). there always is, isn't there? maybe there are actual advantages to pushing people away. it keeps secrets safe until the moment they're needed.]

[if Clover wants to get to the Knot while A2 is down, she'll find the terminal almost intuitive to operate. she won't have many options—mostly her own data file that can be written to but can't be deleted while A2 is still here (in case that was something she might have been interested in)—but there's a series of input prompts on the screen that she can follow that will get her out of here if she wants to leave.]

[if she wants to keep kicking the shit out of A2, though, the android is slowly getting to her feet and starting to see red.]

[ Clover doesn't appreciate sarcasm, Knot, but she dashes to the terminal and goes through the options, periodically and often looking over her shoulder to check on A2. She doesn't want to be stabbed in the back. She'd rather do the stabbing if she had to make that choice, but more than that, she wants to leave.

She doesn't think she has the time to look through everything, and that doubt makes her lag, intuitive controls or not. Will she be a useful friend or a useless one? Can she do more good or damage here?

She knows enough. Revise that: she's dreamed enough.

It's time to kick the shit out of A2. Clover aims to disarm first, and if not disarm, wreck that sword into pieces, focusing all her blows there first while A2 still struggles to stand. ]

[disarming and wrecking the sword are two sides of the same coin at this point, which A2 wished Clover hadn't figured out. but for the second fucking time, A2 tries blocking a flurry of blows with her sword arm as she gets to her feet, and the blade shatters. what the hell kind of metal is she made out of that fists can—the Knot is writing more information. great.]

[A2's eyes flash a much more brilliant red for a couple seconds as blocks of code corresponding to what should be pain start running through her processor again. she screams in rage and clenches the fingers of her left hand together into a fist (that she already knows won't be strong enough if Clover can just shatter swords with her bare hands), and something in her code flips.]

[the Knot knows, now, that this likely isn't a fight A2 can win. it has too much data on Clover, the way she fights, what she can do, and A2 is down a weapon, the sword just jagged edges at the end of her hand. but A2 is desperate. she's lost too many times already in a lot of different ways, and she's not going to lose again. what the Knot calls up is more speculation from one of the memories main() has gotten back, but it. should be enough.]

[A2's eyes stay red. she doesn't have to do all of this with one blow. all she needs to do is attack more relentlessly than Clover can defend against. so she retaliates by swinging with her fist, then the broken sword, and she won't stop doing either of those until either she wins or her body gives out.]

[ There are cuts on her arms, but Clover pays no mind. It'll heal, soon enough, an ever alarming sign of how human she is(n't). She also pays no mind to A2's screams. The angrier she is, the less effective she'll be as a fighter. That's cool-minded logic that Clover somehow has.

Dodging and blocking isn't something Four does often, so she stumbles against A2's retaliation, wincing at every blow that hits. Clover can withstand it, but for how long? She wonders how she'll explain her wounds even as the broken edges of A2's sword hand digs into her skin.

This can't go on. She has to knock A2 out.

She kicks at A2's feet—an attempt to knock her off balance one more time, then if that succeeds, she'll shift to kick her in the solar plexus and tackle her to the ground.

If it doesn't succeed, she'll wait until A2's body gives out, jumping back and dodging so A2 expends more and more energy in her fury. ]

[no, Clover has exactly the right idea. A2 is reckless, careless, nearly senseless right now, so it's far easier than it has any right to be to knock her down and keep her pinned. and she can't seem to get the leverage to buck her legs or otherwise force Clover off of her, and it's only making the red behind her eyes glow brighter.]

Y▒u can't pr▓▓ect he█ f▒om ▓▓!

[by now her voice is more distorted than it's ever been. she's not yelling, but she could be if the noises being synthesized by her throat were at all as clear as she wanted. is it a threat that she's making? does it even make sense? or is she just screaming out something that she thinks will affect Clover?]

[she should be making choices based on her code. based on data and what she knows about the people she's fighting. but this? words are happening. indelicate, poorly chosen, likely without meaning to anyone who hears them. she might as well be a machine.]

[ You can't protect her from—?

Clover doesn't know what that last word could be and doesn't care to take the time to decipher it. This isn't about protection right now. It's about taking care of a threat. They're two sides of the same coin, but only one side of a coin faces up at a time. Clover presses her lips together in a grim line as she straddles A2, trying to find her balance and a position that won't get her kicked or flipped off.

She takes a deep breath and raises her left fist high above her head. As she releases her breath, she brings her fist down as hard as she can onto A2's forehead.

She hopes it doesn't kill her. ]

[it doesn't. good news there.]

[the bad news is that it smashes A2 flat against the platform and leaves a dent in her skull. the framework pops out of place, jabbing at the synthetic skin from underneath and raising jagged edges just barely sharp enough to break through and reveal A2 for the machine she truly is. there's no oil, no blood to stain Clover's hand as the red behind the machine's eyes dies out.]

[she won't die here. she'll be rebuilt for as long as the Knot can keep rebuilding her. but she can feel herself deactivating with what little awareness she has left. it tends to fade pretty quickly with a shard of metal stabbing through the CPU. this isn't how it's written. this shouldn't be how it ends.]

Break your code.

[the words are distant and weak, muffled like they're being spoken through a broken filter, but not distorted this time. whatever she could mean by that, they're the last words she speaks before her body goes still. the keyboard of the Knot blinks to life; the screen shows Clover the steps to get out of here, to open a portal of light at the threshold of the stairs and walk out of the dream. there won't be an option to modify her own code.]

[ Clover waits, watching A2 for a full three minutes before she gets up.

"Break your code," she says. Some things are easier said than done, and she says that so often, in one way or another, but how often do refrains change?

She leaves this dream, hoping for the best. ]

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